Fantastic article by The Verge: "Something strange and remarkable started happening at Google immediately after Larry Page took full control as CEO in 2011: it started designing good-looking apps. [...] We went to Google looking for the person responsible for the new design direction, but the strange answer we got is that such a person doesn't exist. Instead, thanks to a vision laid out by a small team of Google designers, each product team is finding its way to a consistent and forward-looking design language thanks to a surprising process. They're talking to each other." I think Google's recent complete design transformation is one of the most remarkable shifts this industry has seen post-iPhone. I think the importance and possible ramifications of this shift are best captured by Tom Dale: Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services.

Exactly. I'm guessing this is the team that's responsible for breaking the mobile version of Google Plus, and making it nearly unusable. It used to be very clean and easy to read, with an emphasis on text. But now it's just a huge clusterf**k and an eyesore. The last thing I want to see on my phone are posts with giant-ass images. Plus, they removed the ability to long press on a thread to mute it. Whoever decided to remove that feature should be fired immediately, and then removed from the gene pool. Anybody who is stupid enough to do a thing like that has no business ever reproducing.

Hopefully they will stay away from the Google Voice app. The GV app is in desperate need of an overhaul, but not from these assclowns.